In The Ascent of Money Niall Ferguson traces the evolution of money and demonstrates that financial history is the essential back story behind all history. By learning how societies have continually created and survived financial crises we can find solid solutions to today's worldwide economic emergency. As he traverses historic financial hot spots around the world, Ferguson illuminates fundamental economic concepts and speaks with leading experts in the financial world. Episode 4 Risky Business - Life is a risky business which is why people take out insurance. But faced with an unexpected disaster, the state has to step in. Professor Ferguson travels to post Katrina New Orleans to ask why the free market can't provide some of the adequate protection against catastrophe. His quest for an answer takes him to the origins of modern insurance in the early 19th century and to the birth of the welfare state in post ...

Controversial historian Professor Niall Ferguson argues that in the last century there were not in fact two World Wars and a Cold War but a single Hundred Years' War. It was not nationalism that powered the conflicts of the century, but empires. It was not ideologies of class or the advent of socialism driving the century, but race. Ultimately, ethnic conflict underpinned 20th century violence. Finally, it was not the west that triumphed as the century progressed, in fact, power slowly and steadily migrated towards the new empires of the East Episode 4 A Tainted Triumph - The last years of World War Two, considering the terrible ethical compromises the Allied nations were forced to make to defeat their German and Japanese enemies, and the long term consequences for the victors ...